National Rail
How a disconnect between employees and management can lead to unsafe behaviour - and how behavioural psychology resolved that.
SERVICES: Insights
IMPACT AREA: Campaign & Internal Comms
TOOLS: Interviews, Emotix & Neopic
The Challenge
Network Rail reported a significant increase in trackside accidents, fatalities and near miss incidents with engineering staff. This was causing disruption to services and among the organisational perceptions of safety and security. These incidents were also possibly linked with the increased implementation of automated systems/equipment.
Organisation was charged with reducing these incidents and installing a culture of greater trackside awareness and safety.
Industry Considerations
Safety within the travel sector is a major factor in terms of job attraction, job satisfaction and job security. It also impacts employee mental and physical well-being. Organisations that are seen to be invested in the safety and well being of their employees are also those brands that are received positively in the public domain.
What we did
Multi layered approach
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Initial psychological audit of instruction materials and guidelines for employees
Assessment of who leads advice, compliance and guidelines in trackside safety
Psychological in-depth interviews with employees
Quantitative assessment with our bespoke Emotix tool of the hidden cognitive and behavioural factors that increased unsafe trackside behaviours or that might contribute to unsafe behaviour/decisions
Our unique Neopic engine to ascertain the underlying decision motivations of the employee base and segment.
This enabled us to understand precisely what needed to be said to engage specific groups.
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Revealed a hidden disconnect between trackside employees and management in terms of what was considered safe/unsafe and how to engage greater safety attitudes/ownership. Trackside staff did not engage with management in terms of perceiving them as a viable believable source in relation to expertise on trackside behaviour.
Discovered 5 hidden emotional/behavioural barriers to engaging in ‘safe behaviour’ and adhering to procedural and manual regulations/processes
Knowing these 5 barriers enabled us to rework copy and comms to increase relevancy, ownership and understanding of trackside employees. It also revealed who might lead and act as a ‘believable and inspiring’ authority in terms of training and awareness.
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Client reported that after our interventions and re-editing of the copy and way that safety guidelines were developed and presented – employee awareness of ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ behaviour significantly increased (via sampling with random safety knowledge tests).
Attendance at safety training and awareness sessions also dramatically increased – as employees now related and ‘believed in’ the people who owned and delivered these programmes.
Greater adherence to trackside spot checks in terms of appropriate safety uniform and trackside equipment.
Drop in trackside and warehouse incidents following these changes.
This psychological work uncovered both the hidden influences on trackside safety behaviour and also who within the organization could inspire and engage our employee’s to take safety seriously. The ability to rework our safety materials was really impactful – creating clearer, more engaging and less intimidating material. What was really supported was that the psychology work revealed what needed to change AND helped us work through those changes from a behavioural perspective.